


Acid Test

by TinyFakeFanficRock



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2018-09-27 15:46:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10029953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyFakeFanficRock/pseuds/TinyFakeFanficRock
Summary: Head versus heart used to be an easy question for the Sole Survivor.  Used to be.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have never posted the first chapter of an unfinished fic before, so I really hope I don't end up writing myself into a corner. But I loved this idea from the minute I read the prompt on the New Fallout Kink Meme, and I'm impatient, so here we are. I'll update the tags/rating as needed.
> 
> Betaed by the amazing, inimitable Lindra. <3

The first time Zoe met Danse, his insistence on explaining basic tactics to her in the most patronizing manner possible reminded her of her least favorite commanding officer, the more-American-than-thou zealot they'd all called Ass-Stick behind his back. So once they concluded their business at ArcJet, she'd been astonished he thought her worth an invitation to join the Brotherhood of Steel. She was not, however, so astonished that she thought it'd be fun to sign up for even more condescension. But she liked keeping her options open, so she told him she needed to take care of some other things and would think about it. He believed her, of course -- everyone believed her.

That's why the Railroad had dubbed her Charmer while they helped her get to Shaun. And even though that hadn't ended the way she'd wanted -- or maybe because of that; it was easier to work against your own son when he was so cold-blooded -- she'd kept her cover, kept Patriot's plan alive, because she did want to help synths. She owed Nick alone too much to do anything different.

Now, however, Desdemona was balking at the idea of helping the Institute get a nuclear reactor online to solve their power crisis. "You said they mentioned the Brotherhood was on the site. Find out what _they_ want with this Beryllium Agitator while P.A.M. and I work out whether it's worth the risk to have you continue undercover with the Institute."

So Zoe went back to the Cambridge Police Station, put on her most earnest face, and told Danse -- _Paladin_ Danse, she was going to be calling him now, oh joy -- that she'd given it a lot of thought and now she was very sure the Brotherhood of Steel was the future of the Commonwealth.

She only had to jump through a couple more hoops -- kill these ferals, fetch that haptic drive -- before she got to go play on the big gray balloon. She wasn't thrilled when the first thing they told her to do was sit through a speech from the Elder, but she remembered she was supposed to be finding out everything she could about the Brotherhood, and the face their leader showed the rank-and-file was probably a good baseline for any future data she collected about him.

When Arthur Maxson walked into the room, her immediate thought was _Nate would have fallen for him instantly._ He had the brooding intensity that Nate had always liked in his men, and a scar that ran from underneath his eye all the way into his beard. Nate might just have been trying to make her feel better about her disfigurement all the times he tried to tell her that scars were sexy, but he _did_ date quite a few guys who had them.

Of course, Nate's picker _had_ been chronically broken, and Maxson quickly reminded her of that by claiming that synths were more dangerous than atom bombs. _Easy for you to say, fucko;_ you _didn't get to see them fall._ Fortunately, he didn't linger on the comparison, allowing Zoe to keep a lid on her urge to call bullshit.

Then, to her surprise, Maxson himself came over and personally promoted her to Knight. Apparently Danse -- _Paladin_ Danse -- had been a bit more impressed with her than he'd let on. Maxson had also sent her to go explore the ship and meet the rest of the major players in the Prydwen's crew, which made her a little nervous: That task was a little too close to her _actual_ reason for being there. Was he trying to catch her spying, or did he really think enough of her that he thought it'd be worth her getting to know the higher-ups?

Zoe turned that one over in her head while she crouched in Bay 3 and checked out her new T-60 power armor. Her verdict: Nicer than the T-51d she'd been issued during that little winter carnival in Anchorage, and _damn_ nicer than the glorified can of Pork 'n' Beans she'd been clanking around in since the rooftop in Concord. The servos were exquisitely tuned; she was pretty sure this suit would just about let her pick up a Brahmin.

"Like what you see?" Zoe looked up to see a woman with slightly frazzled red hair and scintillating brown eyes peering down her power armor frame at her.

"Oh, _yes_." _The armor's nice, too._ She stood up quickly, because being on her knees in front of this gal was making all the wrong wheels in her head turn. That gave her a chance to notice the woman's noble, if slightly careworn, features -- and the pale but obvious scar running down her right cheek. Zoe was starting to feel like maybe she fit in around here. _Except for that whole thing where they think synths should all be killed,_ she reminded herself sharply, a bit chagrined that a good-looking woman could make her forget that. _God, I'm venal_ and _shallow._

If the woman had noticed Zoe's distraction, she ignored it and kept to business. "You must be Knight Watts. My name's Ingram and this lovely little grease pit is where you'll usually find me. If your power armor's too tight in the crotch, the Prydwen's about to crash into the ground, or a robot's gone haywire, you come see me."

Zoe could barely think about the latter two scenarios once the word "crotch" had left Ingram's mouth. And the Railroad called _her_ Charmer. "Sounds like you have a pretty full plate."

"Plate? Hell, I have a whole table's worth of duties around here. There isn't a day that goes by on this tub without five or six things breaking down." Oh! Right! Ingram was one of the people she was supposed to be meeting! "And since I'm stuck in this rig, I'm not as spry as I used to be ... the work tends to pile up."

Zoe had to look down to see what she meant by "this rig". Turned out Ingram didn't have legs and the power armor frame was what she walked on. _Well, guess that explains why the scar doesn't much faze her._ "Oh, I, um. I hardly noticed." _Shit,_ she thought. _Before the bombs I was smart. My brain must still be frozen. Then again, before the bombs, I still had a weakness for redheads. And the hardware doesn't change that, or those eyes, or that devastating air of confident competence._

Ingram's gaze turned sharp, then speculative. "Hm. Can't tell if you're patronizing me or trying to be polite."

"I really didn't see it. I mean, your eyes are up here." _Smooth, Watts. Really smooth._

Ingram snickered, waited a moment, then said with some surprise, "You're not gonna ask how I ended up in here?"

"Not my business." Zoe hated it when people felt entitled to ask about the gouge down her face, and she figured Ingram probably got even more of that kind of thing.

It looked like she figured right; Ingram's mouth barely moved, but there was a smile in her eyes. "A keen grasp of something that should be obvious but apparently isn't. I like you already, Knight."

Zoe beamed, then got enough of her brain working again to ask Ingram some questions about the Prydwen's history and construction. The Proctor was a gold mine: she'd joined the project when the ship was only halfway through its design phase, so she knew absolutely everything about it. The only problem Zoe was having with the information she was getting was understanding the more technical details -- she was more of a programmer than a mechanical engineer. She was just asking Ingram the best way to get some more expertise in the field when a scribe scurried up to them. "Ah, Proctor, we have a minor flood situation on the lower level that could use your attention."

Zoe could sympathize.


	2. Chapter 2

Once the gleaming Venus that was Proctor Ingram had disappeared into the bowels of the Prydwen, Zoe's head cleared a bit and she decided to see if she could get any useful information from the terminal nearby while no one was around to watch her browse it. She did learn a few things from it: Ingram was a hell of a programmer as well as a genius mechanic; Maxson, the complete dick, wouldn't let her off the ship despite medical clearance; and Proctor Teagan was either a good friend who looked out for Ingram's favorite candy or a sleazy asshole trying to get her into bed.

She wandered over to the armory to try to figure out which it was. He was shrewd-faced, genial, and definitely knew his way around the weapons and armor he sold, which were all good signs. But then he actually asked her to go shake down farms for food, which as far as Zoe was concerned put him firmly into the _asshole_ category. "I'll get back to you on that," she told him with an easy professionalism that she absolutely did not feel. _Your recruits have to buy their own gear from you, so it's not like you don't have the caps to pay for food like us mere mortals._ Maybe she'd buy some surplus crops just to placate him, but like hell was she going to go order some settlers to give up the food they'd toiled over to people who cared absolutely nothing about them.

After that, the rest of Zoe's tour was an absolutely interminable anticlimax. _Ha, anti-climax -- shut up shut up shut_ up _, brain._ She agreed to look for technical documents for Proctor Quinlan; that task would show her use to the Brotherhood without her having to do anything morally repugnant. She'd still run anything she found by Tinker Tom first, just in case the Railroad could use the info, too. Plus she knew it drove Deacon nuts when she gave Tom ideas, and annoying Deacon was always worth the effort.

She made friends with Quinlan's cat, Emmett, and then asked the proctor how much cat hair was clogging up the fan in the terminal he was cuddled up to.

He sighed heavily. "It probably does need cleaning out again. I just hate taking the time away from other things to do it, and I don't exactly trust an initiate with that machine."

"Would you trust a knight?" 

"You're offering?" he asked incredulously.

Of course she was. When she "ran a stress test to double-check the fan's efficacy" afterward, she read all his messages, taking special note that Proctor Ingram was involved in a major project that the Brotherhood, in Maxson's own words, had a lot of resources riding on its success. So it was definitely beneficial to Zoe's mission to stay on Ingram's good side. That was, of course, the only reason she perked up at reading that the proctor might find the spare parts at the General Atomics Factory useful. She also somehow managed not to throw up in Quinlan's desk drawer after dragging her eyeballs through that ridiculous hagiography of the Elder.

Then it was across the hallway to Knight-Captain Cade and quite possibly the single most useless medical questionnaire Zoe had ever endured, and given the administrative bullshit Uncle Sam had had her slogging through a couple centuries back, that was saying something.

The first two questions, about radiation exposure and communicable diseases, were perfectly reasonable, but then he looked at her, rubbed his bald head, and asked, "Have you ever had sexual relations with any species considered non-human?"

Zoe arched an eyebrow. "This is enough of a thing in the Brotherhood that it's question three?"

He glared at her. "Not in the Brotherhood -- we consider that absolutely distasteful -- but you'd be surprised how many wastelanders answer yes. Since you haven't spent too much time in the wasteland, I'll assume your answer is no."

Fine by her. What she and Glory did on their own time to blow off steam was their business. She finished the exam by assuring him that she was a professional soldier and would point her laser rifle wherever she was ordered. Zoe turned her scarred side away and then flashed her dimples just to make sure he didn't think too hard about how she never actually said she'd pull the trigger. "Thanks for clearing me for duty. I'll just get out of your way now." 

She'd come back later to go through his terminal when he wasn't in his clinic. Her introductions now complete, it was time to go back to Maxson and find out what he had in mind for her now. _Probably kicking puppies,_ she thought, and ran through a few different things she could say to buy herself time if he asked her to do something outright unacceptable.

To her pleasant surprise, he just wanted to take Fort Strong back from the super mutants there. Zoe wasn't keen on the Brotherhood taking possession of a cache of Fat Man shells, but she had to admit it was a damn sight better than the super mutants running around with those beeping nuclear lumps of death. Even Desdemona couldn't argue with that. So even if Danse was a little creepily enthusiastic about "exterminating" nonhumans, Zoe climbed aboard the Vertibird with an untroubled moral compass.

When she was ensconced behind the minigun, she actually felt herself relaxing. The rhythms of combat remained one of her few sources of solace as the closest she could get to old times, even with Boston in ruins below them and the enemy now green and very large. Fighting had somehow become the easy part of her life: just kill or be killed, like it said over KL-E-0's store.

 _Guess there's not really an opportunity to brood about how your whole world is dead when you're trying to avoid getting your head blown off or bashed in,_ she thought as she reloaded, ready to back up Paladin Danse when he kicked in the door of Fort Strong's armory.

Zoe originally assumed Danse insisted on taking point out of a combination of rank and machismo, but a little careful post-battle probing revealed that he particularly hated super mutants because they killed his friend. Oddly, the disclosure made her feel a little better about him, like there was a person behind the paladin after all. She could certainly empathize with the desire for revenge; it was why she had Kellogg's pistol hanging on the wall beside the table where she and Nate used to have breakfast. Hell, it was why she was up to her neck in all this spy shit in the first place.

And she was going to get even further into it. Her next mission as Knight Watts was to go to the Institute and recruit Dr. Li away from Advanced Systems and back to working for the Brotherhood on what she suspected was Ingram's mystery project. All Maxson would tell her was that it was "a potent weapon". That was definitely the kind of shit Desdemona would want details on.

She'd already met Dr. Li when she did the grand tour of the Institute. It had been civil, but abrupt; Li was very focused and didn't like having her attention diverted from her experiments. Zoe could respect that, and didn't take the brusqueness personally. She bet Li hadn't been nearly so restrained when she told the Brotherhood where to get off down in D.C. _Wish I'd seen that,_ she thought, and smirked for a moment before remembering that her job was to get her thinking _positively_ about the Brotherhood again. _I'm really gonna have to live up to my codename for this one._

She looked around for Ingram, thinking another chat with her would get her in the right spirit for persuasion, but the proctor was currently scowling at the generator she was deftly disassembling. It wasn't the kind of expression that suggested an interruption would be at all welcome. Zoe watched her for a few moments anyway, hoping she'd spontaneously decide to take a break, but it didn't happen. So she sighed and boarded a Vertibird back to the airport. She'd just take some time on the surface to get her head together before she went back to the Institute.

It was definitely time to vent some steam.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, let's crank that there rating up.

Zoe knew nobody got to be a heavy by being easy to take down, but she had to give it to Glory -- oh, and she _was_ ; much of Zoe's face had to be glistening at this point with the evidence of that -- most women wouldn't be able to stand up by now, not even with the help of the wall behind her. Ingram, of course, wouldn't have that problem ... _Hey, horndog, maybe concentrate on the woman you're doing right the hell now?_

The floor was starting to get a little hard on Zoe's knees, but that was a small price to pay for Glory's stream of curses and that lovely little noise she made when Zoe curled the sides of her tongue around her clit.

Finally Glory blurted between gasps, " _Fuck_ , girl," and called a halt.

Zoe sat back on her heels and looked over her handiwork. Glory's white hair was drooping down into her unfocused eyes, a fine sheen of sweat glimmering on her face in the lantern light and her breasts still heaving under her shirt as she caught her breath -- _damn, should've gotten those out. Notes for next time._ It was still a satisfying enough picture that she felt like voicing her smugness. "We oughta take you all the way up this steeple and start using you for a signal. 'Oh, God' if by land, 'Shit, yes' if by sea, 'Ahh, _fuck_ ' if by air ..."

Glory rolled her eyes. "I liked your mouth a lot better a minute ago."

"Yeah. Yeah, you did." Zoe smirked, wiped her face, and pulled a crate from under the steps to sit on while she cracked open a can of water.

"I'd say you're worse than Deacon, but he is never getting anywhere _near_ my pussy, so you're only just as bad." Glory pulled her pants back up and paused after buttoning them. "Your turn?"

Zoe waved her off with the hand not holding her water. "Got what I came for." It was actually true. Zoe hadn't been able to think of anything but just dropping to her knees since -- _never mind since when_ , -- and once she'd scratched that itch, had warm thighs clamped against her ears, she was sated.

"All right, then. Thanks." Glory shrugged, lit a cigarette, and headed downstairs on legs that were impressively steady already. "See you around."

It was abrupt, but that was Glory. She'd said from the outset that she was looking only for "no-feelings fucking", which was fine by Zoe. No, really, it was. The last thing she needed in her life right now was a romantic partner to worry about. _See, that's smart. Keep telling yourself that._ She drained the rest of the water in one gulp as if finishing the can finished the train of thought.

Zoe dusted herself off, braved a look in a pocket mirror to make sure she was as presentable as she ever could be anymore, and ambled down the stairs. Once she was back at HQ, or, as she lovingly called it, "the dungeon", she saw Deacon making a beeline for Desdemona and Doc Carrington with way too much purpose in his stride and decided to intervene.

"Now, now, Deacon, Mommy and Daddy are busy. C'mere."

Carrington turned his withering glare on her. "Do you _mind_?"

Desdemona only rubbed her temple and lit another cigarette before tapping on the map in front of them to regain Carrington's attention. Zoe grinned at Deacon and tossed her head in the direction of the passage out, and he followed her to the wrecked building above.

She always parked her power armor there before entering HQ proper; the sight of it, even the non-Brotherhood variety, provoked a variety of reactions from the other members of the Railroad, none of them positive. It was understandable, and Zoe wasn't a total asshole, so outside it stayed.

On her way in she'd noticed the suit's left ankle was sticking a little. She probably needed to clear some radscorp guts or something out of it. Zoe plopped down next to it and dumped out her pack to find the little armor-maintenance toolkit she'd gotten off the Prydwen. One perk of this assignment, anyway. _Not the only p-- shut the fuck up, brain._ Once she had it open beside her, she lined herself up so she could watch Deacon without being too obvious about it and said, "So, Deeks, you got any tips for selling an Institute scientist on the Brotherhood?"

He tried to smooth out the turn of his head, but she'd seen how he jerked at the start. "Who to the what now?"

Good, she'd actually managed to surprise him. She'd worried there'd been a sunglasses-wearing Initiate shadowing her on the Prydwen. "So there's this doc who used to work with the Brotherhood back in D.C. and now works at the Institute. Beardo wants her to come back and work on some kind of anti-Institute weapon. You think Des is going to flip if she does?"

He turned that idea over for a while, but he didn't instantly choke on it, which was promising. "Well, I guess the Brotherhood is a step up from the Institute, and I do like the words 'anti-Institute weapon'. Not a fan of the words 'anti-Railroad weapon', though. Could they point this thing at us?"

Zoe waved a screwdriver in a "beats me" kind of motion. "I don't know many details yet. All the references to it I've seen have been vague, probably on purpose. I'm hoping I can at least get some information out of the Institute doc. Even so, if whatever-it-is is big enough that Arthur 'My Airship Totally Isn't Overcompensation' Maxson's personally interested, odds are the thing would be gross overkill on the Railroad. I don't know if that makes you feel better or not." She found and popped out the problem, some kind of yuck that smelled fishy. Must have come from the mirelurks this afternoon rather than the radscorp in the morning.

She was stowing her tools when Deacon finally said "It makes me feel like this is the kind of decision someone else should be responsible for. We'll go ask Mom. But first ..." He pointed to her toolkit. More accurately, to the rings she'd turned into a zipper pull with a chain. "Charmer, are those wedding rings?"


	4. Chapter 4

Goddamn, Deacon was sharp-eyed. He knew she was looking for her son, knew she'd found the end of the story in the Institute and that it wasn't a happy one. But he'd never asked about Shaun's other parent, nor had she volunteered that information.

They'd always played it cagey with each other, their tall tales breeding faster than mole rats the minute things got personal. It'd been fun for a while, but Zoe was getting seriously curious about her fellow agent. She wondered if by now Deacon was only holding out on her out of a sense of professional pride. Fine, she'd crack first. "Yeah. They are."

He gave her a long look. "She know about Glory?"

"He, actually. And he's --"

Deacon actually snorted. " _You_? Married to a _guy_? Oh, come on, Charmer, even _I_ wouldn't try to sell a line of Brahminshit like that."

"No, really. And he's dead." Deacon opened his mouth, presumably to offer some kind of condolence, but she kept talking. If she gave sense a chance to kick in, she'd shut up. "Nate was my best friend. We served together in the army for ten years. Then, when we got out --" she wasn't yet ready to say _how_ that had happened, -- "we both really wanted kids, but we were both gay and chronically single. They wouldn't adopt kids out to singles back then, and our veterans' benefits didn't cover surrogacy or artificial insemination. So we decided to get married and make our own. The plan was we'd have one or two, then get divorced and keep being friends and co-parents. We got as far as having one before the world went to hell." _There, chew on that bit of truth for a while._

"So, not the love of your life."

"No, but he was a good person and he deserved better than what happened in that fucking Vault." Zoe had to blink a couple of times before she got hold of herself again. It was past time to retreat to bullshit. "Seven and a half feet tall, gatling guns for hands, and the best damn Vera Keyes impersonator."

"I bet your mom was proud of you for landing a catch like that." Deacon seemed willing to accept that Honesty Hour was now over -- maybe even a little relieved. Zoe suspected feelings were not his strong suit.

She shrugged. "She was just happy she was getting grandkids. Speaking of moms, let's go ask Des if Dr. Li and I can go to the power armor sleepover."

Desdemona was not happy about advancing the Brotherhood's plans for an unspecified major weapon, but Desdemona was never happy about anything. However, she did decide that a large flashy project -- plus the loss of one of their precious scientists -- would keep the Institute's ire focused on the Brotherhood. Better them than the Railroad -- at least the Brotherhood was prepared for large-scale fights. Had come here looking for one, in fact.

"You're going to have to keep a close eye on what they're doing with this weapon," Des was saying. "If it looks like they're going to do something ... unacceptable with it, I expect you to sabotage the project in every way possible."

"Will do." _More like_ Have done, will again _, but let's not air out all the secrets in one day. Gotta save some of the surprises._

Desdemona nodded and went off to look through the holotapes Zoe had copied off of the Brotherhood computers and update P.A.M. as necessary. Deacon cast a meaningful eye over at Carrington's shelves and took up a too-casual pose against a wall where he could see both entrances to the dungeon.

Zoe got the hint and began nudging boxes and bottles an inch or two this way and that. She didn't move things so much that they would be harder to find in an emergency, but the perfectly straight rows the doctor fussed over were absolutely destroyed. "So I guess I get to deliver the 'come back, baby, I swear we'll do better this time, those _other_ murderous bastards are no good for you' speech after all."

Deacon snorted. "Don't forget the flowers."

"I ... do not think she is the flowers type." Zoe sighed and turned a bottle of Rad-X so its label was several degrees off of center. "Jesus, Deacon, I don't know if I'm cut out for this. I mean, I'm good at looking honest while I tell people what they want to hear, but I don't think I'm very subtle."

"Nonsense. Between the laser gun and the clanky armor you're damn near invisible." His smirk was actually audible.

She bounced a soft splint off his shoulder. "Goddammit, Captain Smartass, I mean what if they can figure out what I'm trying to do? Like, _all_ of it?"

"Then I guess that's what the laser gun and the clanky armor are for." He threw the splint back and tossed his head meaningfully in the direction of the back entrance. _Incoming._

Zoe dropped the splint back on the shelf and sauntered over to Tom's worktable with exaggerated casualness. "Well, when you put it like that, what's the point of sneaking?"

Deacon followed, patting her shoulder and saying sagely, "Ammo conservation. And fun. You have to remember the fun."

A deliberately loud sigh from the other side of the room told her Carrington had discovered her work. Zoe allowed herself a chuckle. "If you'd been around before the bombs, they'd have made a calendar out of your little affirmations. Deaconism-A-Day or something."

"We could still do it, you know. I hear you know a lady with a printing press."

"And I'm sure she'd grant you access to it in exchange for a candid on-the-record interview." It was Zoe's turn to smirk; she knew Deacon would rather be slurped on by bloodbugs.

Sure enough, he actually flinched. "Maaaaaaybe not, then. We can't all be media darlings like you. But hey, totally strictly off-the-record, since you told me some of your story, about time I returned the favor, huh?"

She got excited for about thirty seconds before realizing that there was no way this was his real story, especially not right after she'd joked about drawing attention to him. _One of the first synths to get a 'cranium reboot', my ass. You're giving me your recall code, my_ fucking _ass._ He handed her the scrap of paper, and she immediately grabbed a lighter off the nearby desk and incinerated it without even unfolding it.

"What the hell, Charmer?" Everything else he'd said might have been bullshit, but he was genuinely flabbergasted in that moment. It always felt good to do something that Deacon wasn't expecting.

"Even if everything else you just told me somehow _was_ true, you are nowhere near dumb enough to carry something like that written down. Although if you thought I'd buy that story, maybe you're dumber than I thought."

Deacon let out a little huff -- probably the closest he'd come to admitting _You're right, that was another load of shit._

"One day, Deeks, you're gonna get distracted and you're going to say something true."

He looked away a little too fast on that one. _Hit home there._ Zoe pretended not to notice, but filed it away for the next time she was tempted to drop some more breadcrumbs of truth for him. Speaking of trails, she'd better get out and put some distance between herself and the dungeon before she relayed back to chat with Dr. Li.


	5. Chapter 5

Zoe and Deacon parted company at the gates of Goodneighbor. "Where you headed from here?" _Doubt he'll tell me for real, but I'll probably get a smile out of whatever he says._

"Oh, you know, figured today was the day I'd go see the Pillars of the Community and gain enlightenment." _Yup._

"In that case, I'm coming along to watch. Since sunglasses count as 'worldly possessions' that you'd have to free yourself of first."

"Oh, well, deal's off, then. Guess I'll make the rounds of the dead drops instead. How about you?"

"I'm gonna go to the General Atomics Factory and see what I can find to put a smile on Ingram's face. She's got the most interesting information _and_ she's hot."

She'd said it playfully, thinking she could hide her infatuation with Ingram in plain sight. And it probably would have worked on anyone but Deacon. He gave her a long, sad look before saying with a seriousness totally unlike him, "Don't date your sources, Charmer. It never ends well."

"You knew Hancock was already married to that Jet inhaler when you got involved with him," she shot back, trying to lighten the tone of the conversation. But she couldn't meet his gaze and she knew he was noticing that. _Goddammit, D, stop knowing me so well._ Time to play more serious defense. "Look, me obviously sucking up to the Brotherhood should have the Institute worried about them instead of us."

"Just keep it to the figurative sucking up. Can't have you getting brought up on fraternization charges."

Zoe was glad her helmet hid her blush. "Of course not. I'm a good soldier." She gave him a sarcastic little Brotherhood salute. "Ad victoriam, Deeks."

"I gotta say, for all their faults, the Brotherhood _does_ have a snappy sign-off. We should come up with something like that."

"How about 'choo-choo, motherfucker'?" Zoe pumped her fist twice as if pulling an old-timey train whistle.

Deacon copied the gesture with nothing short of delight. "Oh, Des is really gonna hate this one. Choo-choo, Charmer."

\---

Zoe picked the biometric scanner and military-grade circuit board in the best condition from her haul and wrapped them up, first in a sheet and then in a tarp. She grabbed a pink message pad from the reception desk's drawer and filled out the form:

**To** Proctor Ingram  
 **Date** March 6 **Time** 12:25  
 **While ~~You Were~~** I Was **Out**  
 ** ~~M~~** Knight Zoe Watts  
 **of** Sanctuary Hills  
 **Phone** 978-369-  
She caught herself midway through, laughed a little, scratched that out, and wrote in the **Message** section, _Thanks for keeping the blimp in the air. Have fun making something awesome with these._

Her pen hovered indecisively for a moment over the checklist of options before she decided _if you're going to do this, go all out_ and put a big, bold checkmark next to **Wants to See You**. Then Zoe taped the note to the tarp with a tiny scrap of duct tape. Now all she had to do was radio the airport and have lunch while she waited.

The team that came to meet her consisted of Knight Jackson, whom she'd met during a dinner aboard the Prydwen, and two more soldiers who introduced themselves as Lancer-Knight Salazar and Field Scribe Usman.

"You can check the place over again if you want," Zoe told them, trying not to sound too smug, "but I think I got all the really good stuff already."

Scribe Usman eyed the large wheeled carts she'd assembled in the lobby. "Yeah, I guess so. That's a lot of salvage, Knight. A lot." She rubbed her hands together, clearly already taking inventory in her head.

Zoe beamed back at her. "I believe the technical term is 'a shitload'. Give my regards to Proctor Ingram." She placed the parcel and its note directly in Jackson's hands and tried not to think about how he'd dropped his tray on the mess hall floor. Twice. In one trip to his table. "This part is fragile. Don't sit on it."

Salazar damn near cackled. "Watch your ass, man, she saw you coming." They snapped back to businesslike and added, "Good to know we can trust the source of the intel on the factory, too."

"Yeah, they were right on about the factory being pretty intact. I'm even an officially certified Miss Nanny now." 

Their brow furrowed. "Wait, what?"

Jackson chuckled and continued in a deep bass that his helmet's speaker really didn't do justice, "Guess nobody warned you about Watts' sense of humor, JJ."

Protesting _no, wait, that's actually true, they declared me "fully functional" and everything_ was probably not a good move if she wanted these three to give Ingram a flattering description of this conversation, so Zoe went along with it. "I've only been back in the army what, a week? And people are already warning each other about me again. Damn, I'm good."

She watched Salazar get the first load settled on their Vertibird and was relieved to see that they appeared to know how to balance the thing. She'd seen enough recently crashed 'birds around the Commonwealth to worry.

"Settle down, Watts," Usman told her. "JJ's one of the best. They know their shit. We've got this from here."

Zoe knew a dismissal when she heard one, and walked south until she was out of sight, then relayed back to the Institute.

\---

As soon as Zoe had said the word _Brotherhood_ , Dr. Li went even stiffer than usual and said grimly, "I've been looking over my shoulder for almost a decade, waiting for them to send someone like you to kill me."

Zoe reassured her immediately -- "No, no, they need your help," -- but now she was wondering _Oh, hell,_ am _I luring the doc to her death?_ For a split-second, she considered aborting the mission entirely, but her gut told her Dr. Li would be fine. She'd have to puzzle out why later.

The actual convincing was the easy part. Turned out that trip to the FEV lab a while back had uses beyond keeping her promise to Virgil; Dr. Li didn't need to trust Zoe's word about what really happened in there when she had Virgil's right there on the holotape. Seeing the hurt, the disgust -- the _betrayal_ \-- on her face made Zoe want to sit Shaun down for the kind of parental lecture her dad had specialized in, the kind where you started acting right because that beat the hell out of sitting through the whole speech again. _You may be the Director of the Institute, but you're still my son, and I expect better out of you, etc. etc._ Zoe sighed. _Probably too late for parenting._

Of course, Dr. Li's agreement to leave the Institute didn't mean she opened right up about everything -- Zoe tried asking what Maxson might want her to work on and got back, "If they didn't tell you, they didn't want you to know." _Funny how she was just complaining about a lack of transparency_. But, hey, the job got done.

Afterward Zoe sat on a bench in the concourse watching the fake sky and trying to figure out why she hadn't even considered the possibility that she'd been setting a trap for Dr. Li. Maxson struck her as an "ends justify the means" kind of guy, definitely capable of a dick move like that. So why had she been so sure it'd be okay? She started fiddling with her laser rifle, and that's when it came to her.

Danse. Maxson might be willing to resort to underhanded tactics, but Danse would sooner eat his own helmet than do something he considered dishonorable. And he ranked high enough that he would actually know if the Elder played dirty. So since Danse pretty much rhapsodized about him whenever possible, Zoe figured she could give Beardo the benefit of the doubt on this one.

That settled, she still needed to hang around a little longer to make the visit look normal. So she bought some ammo, then had dinner with Newton Oberly, who really wanted to hear about Pre-War food. Zoe hoped it was so the food packets here would start tasting like something. After that, she struggled to keep up with Rosalind Orman's brilliance and enthusiasm in a chat about plasma weapons and got her ass handed to her at chess by X6-88. She made herself feel better by discreetly suggesting that Quentin Filmore hide six alarm clocks, all set to different times, in Justin Ayo's quarters, and then decided that was a good time to make herself scarce.

She radioed Danse when she got back to the surface and arranged for them to rendezvous in Sanctuary. When the Vertibird dropped him off, she said, "Let me get my armor and we'll get going," and trotted off to the frame in her driveway. About fifteen paces away from it, she heard Danse come to a clattering halt behind her. Zoe grinned, knowing what was coming:

"Soldier, what in the _hell_ did you do to your armor?"


End file.
